Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Track pad Preferences

I have two laptops that I switch between when I am at home in Utah. One is my Mac laptop from work. The other is a Sony VAIO. Sony is no longer in the laptop business and when they were unloading their laptops, I picked one up cheap. I tried to give it to my wife, but she couldn't get use to Windows 8.1 and refuses to use it. I have taken it over and use it for personal things like writing in this blog.

Each of my laptops uses a track pad as a substitute for the mouse. The VAIO also has a touch screen but I hate fingerprints on my screen and so I never use it. I am strictly a track pad kind of a guy. The track pads on both computers are very similar with only one difference: the VAIO has three invisible buttons I can click with my thumb while the Mac only has a single button. I say the three buttons are invisible because there is no line that distinguishes where one button ends and another begins. It makes for a seamless track pad on the VAIO and I am sure the designers thought it was a great idea. I hate it though. I am always clicking the right or center buttons when I mean to click the left one.

As there is only a single button on the Mac, I have to use one of my fingers and hold the CTL key to simulate the right mouse button. While it sounds like more work, I actually prefer it. You may disagree but after swapping between two laptops for the better part of several months, I have to say I prefer a single mouse button on a track pad. Unfortunately the Windows 8.1 control panel doesn't allow you to simulate a single button. Too bad.

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